So just how does garbage get from your hand all the way out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean where it swirls in a soup of trashy debris -- or if not there, then to one of the other four trash gyres in the oceans across the globe? Cartoonist Jim Toomey decided to tackle a depressing subject by sending two of his characters off on an adventure with his Sherman's Lagoon comic strip, and we've added the facts to put the real situation in perspective.

The journey starts at the fictional Kapupu Lagoon by the island of Kapupu in the South Pacific Ocean, west of the Elabaob Islands in the Palauan archipelago of Micronesia.